Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

Churches in China’s central province of Henan have been forced by the authorities to take down the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes of President Xi Jinping, according to a recent Bitter Winter report. Every state-registered “three-self” church and meeting venue in one county of Luoyang, a prefecture-level city, received an order to remove the ten Biblical commandments...

All in the month of NOVEMBER How Armistice Day began, 100 years ago 75 years after Monte Cassino, D-Day and Kohima and Imphal Fall of the Berlin Wall – 30 years ago 60 years of the M1 Opioid crisis grows in Britain Is your elderly neighbour starving? Potholes – now deeper than the Grand Canyon...

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”   The early Church Father Tertullian wrote that in the second century, but he could have been writing about Vietnam from 1745 onwards.  For, during the first 200 years of Christianity in Vietnam/Indo-China, a staggering 100,000 Christians are believed to have been martyred for their...

Did you know that the Netherlands first learned Christianity from a Yorkshireman?  Willibrord (658 – 739) was born to devout parents, and joined the Benedictines.  In 678 he went Ireland to study at the Abbey of Rathmelsigi (a centre of European learning in the 7th century).  12 years later, in 690, Willibrord felt God had...

Her front door is a piece of dirty cloth. An open sewer is close by. Her window has been bricked up but still the rain comes in. Her ceiling leaks, too, and looks ready to collapse. A massive crack snakes up one wall. This is home for Rehana and her three children. Rehana’s husband died...

It was: 200 years ago, on 22nd Nov 1819 that George Eliot (pen name of Mary Anne Evans) was born.  This British novelist became one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, best known for Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Dronda. 150 years ago, on 17th Nov...

Has your boss ever tried to get you to do something that is against your Christian faith?  If so, here are some saints for you.   They chose to make a Christian ‘stand’ at work, even though it really irritated their boss. Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronian and Castorius were simple stonemasons in early 4th century Rome.  They...

There are warnings that religious violence in Nigeria is spiralling out of control. The United Nations describes a ‘pressure cooker of injustice’. And a leading US human rights campaigner fears Nigeria could be set to implode, destabilising surrounding countries. UK-based Release International supports Christian victims of violence around the world. Its partners in Nigeria warn...

It was 100 years ago, on 11th November 1919, that the first Armistice Day (now Remembrance Day) was marked in the UK.  King George V had issued a proclamation calling for a two-minute silence at 11:00am to remember the members of the armed forces who lost their lives in the line of duty. The two-minute...

–  Pope who rescued the doctrine of the Incarnation How do you think of Jesus?  As the Lord of lords in glory?  Or as a human baby soon to be born in Bethlehem?   November brings the glorious climax of the church year with the Sunday of Christ the King on 25th November – only to...

The Fall of the Berlin Wall From the Vicar The Beatitudes: ‘Blessed are the persecuted’ The Two Minute Silence A voice in the night In a fog? All you need is love You are loved by God ** Editor:  The Rev Paul Hardingham considers barriers – and breaking them down. The Fall of the Berlin...

Does this sound familiar?  An Archbishop of Canterbury tries to bring unity and calm to a Church split down the middle over seemingly irreconcilable differences, and all the while to promote the Gospel to the wider non-Christian society, in the face of widespread ignorance and even hostility towards Christianity. This isn’t Justin Welby, though. It...